Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Li Long shouted:
"Yes, Comrade Chen, right? Come in!"

Chen Hongjun pushed the door open, looked at Li Long's posture, and asked with a smile:

"Comrade Xiao Li, are you shoveling the snow?"

"Yeah, that's the downside of having a big yard." Li Long didn't ask Chen Hongjun how he found the big yard. He said, "It will take a day or two just to clear the snow. These piles of snow will keep me busy for a while. It's cold outside. Let's go inside to warm up and drink some water."

"No, no, I have something important to do." Chen Hongjun didn't say anything more and asked directly, "I heard that you went to the purchasing station to sell leather this morning?"

"It's me." Li Long said with a smile, "I saw that today is Friday, and I thought you were there, but I ran into someone I don't know..."

"Hey!" Chen Hongjun also felt unlucky. A good thing had turned into a mess. "That person came from the state and stayed with us for a while. It's the end of the year, so it's normal for the higher-ups to have some ideas. He asked you if you have a lynx skin?"

"Yes, but it's gone now." Li Long spread his hands.

"Why is it gone?" Chen Hongjun listened anxiously, "Wasn't it still there in the morning? It's only been noon..."

As soon as he got to work in the afternoon, he heard a man telling a joke about someone selling fox skins as lynx skins, but he was found out. The man left in anger and shame. Chen Hongjun felt something was wrong, and after asking about the man's age and appearance, he immediately guessed that it should be Li Long.

Lynx skin!

It is the end of the year now, and the year-end summary and cadre and personnel adjustments are about to begin. Chen Hongjun also wants to make progress!
In theory, he has gained a lot this year and got a lot of good things, and his achievements are very solid, but who doesn't want to add icing on the cake?
So Chen Hongjun found out Li Long's address and ran over.

"I didn't sell it this morning, so I went to the supply and marketing cooperative. Our section chief Li heard that I had a lynx skin, so he came to take a look and bought it."

"Bought it? How much did he offer?" Chen Hongjun was annoyed. Once it was in Li Xiangqian's hands, it would be difficult to get it back!
"One thousand." Li Long did not hide it. The answer could be found out by asking.

"Not bad... Considering your friendship, he won't get much advantage." Chen Hongjun sighed, then thought for a moment and asked again:
"You only got a lynx skin? You didn't get any other good skins? The price of skins has gone up a lot now. If you have any good skins, I will buy them at a high price!"

Li Long almost mentioned the snow leopard skin, but then he stopped.

The skin was given to me and Gu Xiaoxia by Halimu and Yushanjiang, and I also told Gu Xiaoxia that I couldn't sell it on my own. In addition, Li Long thought that snow leopard skins would become more and more expensive and less and less in the future. If he wanted to sell it, he would at least wait until the price was higher.

"Nothing left, just a few wolf skins and a deer skin." Li Long said, "Most of them are damaged."

"Several wolf skins? Did you destroy the wolf's den?" Chen Hongjun was a little curious.

"We encountered a pack of wolves, and they fought to the death." Li Long proudly told the story again, "In the end, all the wolves were gone, but their skins were not in good condition."

"Let me see!" Chen Hongjun thought that since he didn't get to eat the watermelon, he might as well get some sesame seeds, so he asked Li Long to bring the skin over for him to have a look.

Li Long opened the wing and let Chen Hongjun see the leather.

"Well, this deer skin is quite big, and the deer head is well preserved. The wolf skin is OK, it looks fresh. This one is not peeled very well, there is a lot of oil on it, this one is good..."

Chen Hongjun commented on each photo.

"Then do you accept it?" Li Long asked with a smile.

"Take it. Deerskin... fifty, please." Chen Hongjun evaluated them one by one. "This complete wolf skin is forty, the one with bullet holes is thirty..."

Two hundred and twenty yuan in total. Including the lynx skin, the total was one thousand two hundred and twenty yuan. Not bad for this outing.

Li Long followed Chen Hongjun to the purchasing station with the leather in his arms. The middle-aged man was still there. When he saw Li Long following Chen Hongjun, his face turned a little unhappy and he asked directly:
"You've seen it, right? It's not lynx skin, right?"

"It was sold." Chen Hongjun shook his head. "Someone intercepted it and sold it to Mr. Li from the supply and marketing cooperative for 1,000 yuan."

"What?" The middle-aged man didn't believe it. "How is it possible? Lynx skin is not expensive at one thousand yuan, but is it true?"

"I can still trust Lao Li's vision." Chen Hongjun replied, then asked someone to issue a receipt and pay.

The middle-aged man's face turned red and white, a great opportunity was lost... If he could get the lynx skin, it would definitely be a great achievement.

He did not think that it was a problem of his poor eyesight, but instead blamed Li Long in his heart.

You, young man, you knew that what you were holding was a lynx skin, why didn't you insist at that time? If you had insisted, maybe I would have believed it? Now you bring Lao Chen here, are you here to slap me in the face? You are a disrespectful young man!

But he actually couldn't do anything to Li Long. People like him were extremely selfish and timid, so he could only think a few words in his heart.

After Li Long waited for Chen Hongjun to issue the invoice and signed to receive the money, he jokingly asked:
"Comrade Lao Chen, when are you usually here?"

"One, three, and five. Didn't I tell you?"

"Then why weren't you here today when I asked you to come? Otherwise there wouldn't be any misunderstanding."

Of course I was joking. Actually, it was good today. If Lao Chen was here, Li Xiangqian wouldn't be able to sell the stuff. In comparison, he had a closer relationship with Li Xiangqian.

But usually, most of the things are sold to purchasing stations, so Li Long wanted to ask clearly.

"Usually I'm here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Oh - Wednesdays are the most stable. Sometimes I have meetings later on Mondays, and sometimes I go out to check out the goods on Fridays, like today." Chen Hongjun understood Li Long's thoughts and explained.

Li Long nodded to show that he understood, and then left.

Chen Hongjun chased out and shouted:
"If you have anything in the future, bring it to me first."

"I see. Actually, I came to find you first this time." Li Long replied with a smile and went back to the yard.

His pace was relaxed. With the sale of these skins, the hunting activity in the mountains was basically over. The income was in line with his expectations, and he had added another sum to his savings.

When they returned to the yard, Gu Xiaoxia had not come back yet. Li Long found a cart - an old and slightly broken one, but the wheels were still barely usable. It was an old item left by Comrade Lao Ma, and started pushing the snow out of the yard.

Before last year, when Li Long was pushing snow out with his eldest brother's family in the village, he would often find an excuse to leave after working for a while, and when he came back, the snow had been cleared.

After his rebirth last year, Li Long spent most of his time making money and seldom did snow clearing. Even since the beginning of winter this year, there were so many people clearing snow at home and in the stable that he only had to do a little bit of the work before he finished clearing the snow.

So I basically never felt the fatigue of clearing snow. Now it is different, a large yard of snow, even if it is just the front yard, these five piles of snow will require fifty or sixty small carts to push?
Let’s ignore the backyard for now, as we rarely go there in winter anyway.

Now Li Long has a little idea of ​​why the ancient courtyard houses required so many servants to enter the courtyard. Just sweeping the snow was a big job... I've gone off topic, just my own YY.

After all, if you don’t think about anything when you are working, it will be very tiring. Diverging your thoughts is beneficial to the integration of brain and body.

Some of the snow was piled directly into the flower beds and vegetable gardens in the yard. If the pile is higher, it can be used to make a snow sculpture. Some of the snow was pushed directly to the backyard, where there is a large open space and the terrain is lower than the front yard. Some of the snow was piled in each tree pit, and the trees were watered directly after the snow melted in spring.

The remaining snow has no place to pile, so it can only be pushed outside. There are tree paddies on both sides of the road, where the snow can be piled. Now there are no regular snowplows, and the snow on both sides of the street is basically cleared like this, piling it in the tree paddies. Every time it snows, it is piled on top. In the end, the snow in the tree paddies will be compressed into something thick and similar to ice, and then slowly melt in the spring.

When Li Long pushed a cart of snow out, he saw the police in the police station diagonally opposite were also clearing the snow. Their yard was a little smaller than Li Long's, but there was no vegetable garden or flower field in it. Fortunately, there were many people, and the snow clearing was already finished.

Officer Guo was also in the crowd. When he saw Li Long, he waved. Li Long smiled and continued pushing the cart and shoveling snow.

After pushing two piles of snow, Li Long took a break. Then, he suddenly had an idea and decided to build a snowman with snow right there in the vegetable garden.

Making a snowman is very simple. Just roll a big snowball as the body, a smaller snowball as the head, and two coal cores as eyes. It would be a bit of a waste to use a carrot for the nose, so Li Long found a branch as the nose and pasted a leaf under the nose as the mouth.

After looking at it, he found it a bit monotonous, so he went to look in the wing room and found a rotten straw hat to put on the snowman's head, and then got two branches as arms, and that was it.

It looks clumsy, but very funny and I feel good about myself.

Li Long played for a while and then continued to push the snow.

A lot of snow soon piled up in the tree fields on both sides of the gate. Li Long felt a sense of accomplishment as he watched the snow in the yard gradually decrease.

But no matter what, the snow could not be cleared today. He regretted not letting Li Junshan and the other four stay yesterday. If they stayed, would the snow in the yard still be alive?
Just as I was complaining silently, Gu Xiaoxia came back on a bicycle.

get off work.

Seeing Li Long dumping the snow in the cart outside the door, Gu Xiaoxia got out of the cart and said:

"There are still a lot, right? Wait until I drop the car off and I'll do it with you."

Li Long smiled as he dumped the snow out, then tapped the bottom of the cart and said:

"No need, you take a rest, I'll do it slowly by myself..."

Gu Xiaoxia didn't say anything, but it was obvious that she had no intention of listening to Li Long.

As soon as she entered the yard, Gu Xiaoxia shouted in surprise:

"You also built a snowman?"

"Well, the snow is just there, let's build a snowman for fun." After Li Long pushed the cart in, he saw Gu Xiaoxia standing in front of the snowman, looking at the silly big guy with curiosity and joy. When she saw Li Long coming in, she said sincerely:
"Li Long, you have really good hands - how did you come up with the idea of ​​building this big thing?"

"There's snow, so I just piled it up because I was lazy." Li Long's words were a bit disappointing, but they were the truth. "Do you want to spruce it up a bit?"

"I think..." Gu Xiaoxia obviously still had some ideas, but she turned her head to look at Li Long, then smiled and said, "Let's talk about it after we finish the work."

As he said that, he came over, picked up a shovel and started shoveling snow onto the cart that Li Long was holding.

Li Long had no choice but to take out a shovel from the wing to load the snow. The cart was two-wheeled and could hold less than half of what a flatbed truck could hold. The two of them filled it with snow in just a few moves. Li Long put down the shovel and pushed it, while Gu Xiaoxia helped push it. Together, the two pushed the snow outside and dumped it into the field.

It was the first time for the two to work together, but they had a very good understanding of each other. This made Li Long truly feel the meaning of "Men and women working together makes work less tiring", and he really enjoyed the process.

There were five large piles of snow in the yard, two of which were piled in the vegetable garden and the flower field respectively. Before Gu Xiaoxia came, Li Long had cleared most of the piles, and the remaining two people cleared another pile and a half, and it was completely dark.

"I'll do the rest tomorrow." Li Long put the cart away, wiped his sweat and said, "Let's go back to the house. I'll cook..."

"You do it. I'll wash your clothes from yesterday." Gu Xiaoxia did not refuse. She had eaten the meals cooked by Li Long before and they were no worse than her own.

Watching Gu Xiaoxia take off the coat she wore to work, pick up the laundry basin that had been filled with clothes in the morning and go to the living room to wash clothes, Li Long went to the kitchen to cook.

Although it was dark, it was actually not yet eight o'clock. It was normal to go to bed at eleven or twelve o'clock in the evening in northern Xinjiang, so it was a little late to make dinner now, but not too late.

Li Long used both stoves, cooking rice porridge and cooking vegetables at the same time. His knife skills were average, so the potato shreds were cut into different sizes, but he had a grater, which could grate the potato shreds into thin shreds. He soaked some chili peppers and brought a piece of meat. There were no eggs in the kitchen, otherwise Li Long would have wanted to make some chili pepper scrambled eggs.

One dish didn't quite meet his expectations, so he prepared to stir-fry some pickles.

There was no other way. In this era of scarcity, being able to cook two dishes was already very good, and the variety of dishes was not so demanding. Li Long thought that if he stayed for a while longer, he could use garlic to make some garlic sprouts, or he could also grow some bean sprouts.

During that special period in the previous life, not only city residents who stayed at home, but also people in rural areas were developing various dishes and snacks that they could not make before through online platforms such as Xiaomoushu.

Although the memory is a bit old, I still know the general process.

Pickles need to be rinsed in water, and potatoes need to be soaked in water after being cut. I won’t go into the details of the process, as some people will probably have objections.

Because the clothes had been soaked in detergent for a whole day, Gu Xiaoxia was able to rub them quickly by hand. After rubbing them in the living room, she carried a bucket of water and started rinsing them.

Li Long was faster. When Gu Xiaoxia finished washing the clothes and hung them outside, Li Long's two dishes were already on the table.

In winter, when washing clothes in northern Xinjiang, they usually hang them outside to drain the water and freeze them. They freeze until they are dry and hard, and then they are brought back to the house and hung next to the fire wall to dry. Sand-mud brick fire walls usually have a wire nailed on them to hang things on.

After seeing Gu Xiaoxia finish washing the clothes, Li Long scooped out the porridge and brought it to the table. He then sliced ​​the steamed buns and put them on the stove to toast.

"It smells so good..." Gu Xiaoxia looked at the dishes on the table, wiped her hands and said with a smile:
"I am really lucky. The older sisters in my office all say so. I don't have to cook. My life is very relaxing."

"That's right." Li Long nodded seriously, "Well, you are really lucky to meet me!"

Gu Xiaoxia didn't say that Li Long was shameless. She smiled and went over to look at the steamed bread slices. Li Long took the chopsticks and put the stool in place.

Then the two of them happily ate together. (End of this chapter)